Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

Key Takeaways
• The nature of a relationship is not determined immediately; often, it evolves and
is defined and redefined over time.
• Relationship characteristics include duration, contact frequency, sharing, support,
interaction variability, and goals. The purposes of a relationship are for security
and health.
• Elements of a good relationship include trust, commitment, willingness to work
together to maintain the relationship, support, intimacy, empathy, and skills for
dealing with emotions.
Exercises
• Conduct an inventory of your relationships. Think of all the people in your life
and how they meet each of the relationship characteristics.
• Write a list of all the good relationships that you have with others or witnessed.
What makes these relationships good? Is it similar to what we talked about in this
chapter? Was anything different? Why?
• Write a hypothetical relationship article for a website. What elements make a
lasting relationship? What would you write? What would you emphasize? Why?
Let a friend read it and provide input.
8.2 Relationship Formation
Learning
Outcomes
1. Understand attraction.
2. Ascertain reasons for attraction.
Have you ever wondered why people pick certain relationships over others? We can’t pick our family
members, although I know some people wish they could. We can, however, select who our friends
and significant others are in our lives. Throughout our lives, we pick and select people that we build
a connection to and have an attraction towards. We tend to avoid certain people who we don’t find
attractive.
Researchers have identified three primary types of attraction: physical, social, and task.
refers to the degree to which you find another person aesthetically pleasing. What is deemed
aesthetically pleasing can alter greatly from one culture to the next. We also know that pop culture
can greatly define what is considered to be physically appealing from one era to the next. Think of the
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